Page 84 of The Merciless Laird
He did it with the grim, agonizing care of a man walking a tightrope. He dressed slowly, jaw clamped tight as he wrestled his boots on. He stood upright and took a full, testing breath.
The wound pulled, a sharp, hot reminder of the steel. The fever had left a gritty residue in his joints that made him feel as though his own body had been borrowed by a stranger who didn't know the mechanics of his frame. Yet he was functional. He had been functional under far worse conditions.
He put his hand on the heavy oak door, pulled it open, and walked out into the keep.
The hall was already in motion. He could hear it from the corridor. Voices running a register lower than usual, that pitch of men who were measuring their words and watching the corners. He knew that register well.
He found Torvald in the Great Hall.
Torvald looked up from the document in his hand. He took in the sight of Ivar, upright, dressed, moving under his own power.
"Ye're up," he said.
"Aye."
"Ye're dressed."
"That tends to come with bein' up, Torvald."
Torvald set the document down slowly. He looked at Ivar the way he looked at things he was deciding whether to argue with. His jaw shifted once.
"Daes Matilda ken?"
"She was asleep when I left."
A pause. Torvald looked at the far wall briefly, in the manner of a man performing a calculation he already knew the answer to. "So when she wakes and finds ye gone, she'll come down here."
"Probably."
"And she’ll find ye here, standin' up, havin' conversations."
"She'll manage."
"She'll murder ye," Torvald said, with the calm certainty of a man stating a fact of nature. "Four days at yer bedside, nay sleep tae speak of, and she'll walk in here and find ye discussin' harbor security. I'm nae sayin' it willnae be deserved. I'm just sayin' I'd like some warning so I can be in a different room."
"Noted." Ivar held out his hand for the document.
Torvald looked at the hand. Then at Ivar's face. Then he gave him the document, with the air of a man who had said his piece and washed his hands of the consequences. "Fer what it's worth," he added, "ye look terrible."
"Thank ye."
"I mean it as information, nae an opinion."
"I ken." Ivar looked at the document. "The envoy?"
"Waiting. He's been sharpening his quill since yesterday."
"The Council?"
"Assembled an hour ago." Torvald paused, scanning Ivar’s pale face. "They wouldnae start without ye."
"Then we’ll start."
They went towards the council room and Torvald updated him on their finds. They had uncovered documents taken from intercepted messengers linking Callum directly to the mercenaries involved in the harbor fire. The seals matched. The payment marks were clear. The evidence was undeniable. When they arrived, Ivar sat at the head of the long table.
Henry, the King’s man with the perpetual quill and clinical eyes, laid out the Crown’s position in the measured, bureaucratic tone of someone who had rehearsed his speech and was thoroughly enjoying the performance.
The fire had been deliberate, the evidence unmistakable.
